A common notion I’ve seen circulating throughout this site is that the SSAT is preferred over the ISEE—why is that?
Excellent question. I was thinking of asking the very same question this morning. What I have repeatedly heard is that “boarding schools” prefer the SSAT. However, for excellent day schools where we live on the West Coast, there appears to be no preference between the SSAT and the ISEE.
@mynameiswhatever Andover is the only boarding school that I know of that explicitly stated they preferred the SSAT over the ISEE.
I came to the conclusion that boarding schools prefer the SSAT because more students take it compared to the ISEE. This would give boarding schools a more accurate sense of how an applicant compares to other students since the applicant will be compared to a larger number of students. This is just me speculating because I don’t know the true number of kids who take the SSAT or ISEE— it just seems to be the more popular test.
Actually, for the day schools on the west coast, I heard they prefer ISEE a bit more. Many of those schools host ISEE, but fewer host SSAT.
The NYC schools - Horace Mann, Dalton, Trinity, et.al. - also prefer ISEE. Why? IDK.
Who created the SSAT ? The answer to this question may answer OP’s question.
I could be wrong, but many years ago I recall reading that boarding schools created the SSAT, while Catholic Schools were behind the ISEE. But this all could be incorrect as I really do not know.
As I said, I don’t know the answer, but I don’t think Catholic schools “were behind the ISEE” since many/most of those require HSPT.
Catholic schools in our area used to require ISEE, but I do not know if that is still true.
Catholic schools around us require High School Placement Test (HSPT). So many kids in our school just take ISEE and HSPT to apply for local day schools; only those who aim for east coast boarding schools take SSAT.
There are other schools that state a preference for the ssat on their admissions sites. I’ve read it several places (could not recall which schools but it’s more than just Andover).
SSAT and SAO are the same org.